The sea is a bottomless rubbish pit

First, we should be clear as to what is meant by ‘the sea’. To get the concept into proportion, it is worth remembering that the area of the earth’s surface covered by water is 140m square miles, i.e. 71%. Secondly, its mean depth is 12,450 feet, i.e. c.4000 meters. Obviously, the depth varies. There are points in the Atlantic rift and in the Pacific Ocean where depths up to 8 miles have been recorded. Hence, there is no argument for saying that eventually the seas will be filled with human waste of various kinds, and there is no apparent reason why this waste should not be dumped in the sea. The all-important point is the control that must be exercised by international agreement over such dumping.

The fact is that the consumer countries will produce more and more rubbish as time goes on, and somewhere, somehow, this has to be disposed of. What are the options? They vary according to the source of the material, but there can only be three: sea, land, and air. The disposal of rubbish as land-fill material is certainly not popular, at least in small countries.

Nobody wants to live near land-fill sites. They disfigure the countryside and can prove positively dangerous. Poisonous material can leach out into rivers and adjacent farmland, damaging productivity, causing disease among animals and wildlife in general, and killing fish. People, and especially children living in such areas may also be exposed to the disease.

Air is a second option, in that incineration will convert rubbish into gases. Some domestic rubbish is already being used as fuel for the production of electricity, and this form of recycling will increase in the future. Yet, the sheer volume of all kinds of rubbish produced nowadays means that the first option, the sea, has to be used, undesirable as that may be in principle.

Pollution of land, sea, air, even the damage being done to the ozone layer, is one of today’s great world problems. Any solution to the problem demands first analysis, then international agreement on the enforcement of acceptable standards, then target dates for their full implementation. Rubbish disposal should form part of that process.

If we consider the bottomless rubbish pit, i.e. sea pollution, it is obvious that dumping is only a small part of that problem. Two centuries of industry in the West have left rivers such as the Thames and Rhine so full of chemicals and sewage that no fish could live in them. That process is now being reversed. Agricultural chemicals have added their quota of filth. Add to this the occasional oil spill and even a small amount of nuclear waste and one reaches the present seemingly hopeless situation. The Atlantic seaboard from the Russian arctic circle down to Africa is continuous if patchily affected. There are similar inshore areas elsewhere.

All these contributory factors must be tackled at the source. The ideal situation to work for is that liquid waste should somehow be dealt with inland. That should become easier as new technologies replace old industrial processes. Solid waste, whether industrial or domestic, must be carefully graded. Much of it is bio-degradable; some of it is not. Material such as plastic and rubber should be used as landfills if incineration is impossible. The action of seawater, wind, and weather generally deals with the rest.

The big question is ‘where should this happen?’ and the answer probably is, in the case of Europe, beyond the continental shelf. It should be possible to devise containers capable of sinking non-degradable material to the bottom. Degradable material should be given some initial treatment. Toxic and nuclear waste is already being sunk in special containers.

Sewage, although generally treated, is normally piped into inshore areas, fouling beaches in many places. Recycling is the long-term answer. It would obviously make cheap fuel and useful fertilizer.

Given such measures, the clean-up operation could be completed in a remarkably short time. It would involve governments and private firms in a great deal of expense since present methods of disposal were chosen for simplicity and cheapness. Today, there is an altogether new interest in preserving and beautifying the environment. So one hopes that governments will be forced to move in the right direction.

Otherwise, the sea will remain a rubbish pit in exactly the wrong places.